After a nice Italian lunch with my work colleagues (I made a special excursion to pop in to work on my day off), it was straight down the M6/A66 to Harewood for a round of the HSA/RIA Speed Championship. The weather turned out to be awful - all my gear got soaked and so did I. I did however come very close to beating the current HSA championship leader in his Mk1 Roadster - I was ahead on every split until the last!
It was also nice to see an old friend, ex-MX5 owner, David Horne out campaigning his Caterham Seven. I hadn't seen David since an epic road trip round the West Highlands in 2005. I almost beat him too - I was within a second of his time.
I made a real mess of my last run - outbraked myself on the second corner, locked up and ran out of room. I decided to just keep going straight on, into the field and went about 30 yards before stopping. Fortunately, no harm done and I even managed to drive out without the indignity of being towed. I didn't check the final times (I was too wet!) but I think I ended up second of the four MX-5s that were there.
On Sunday, I was at Kames for a round of the British Sprint Championship. I wasn't competing this time but I had offered my services as a marshal. Turned out to be a fantastic day. I spent the morning on post 2 (Norries corner) where I got to see the different lines everyone was taking up really close. I spent a bit of time on the startline too which was also an eye-opener. The event was really well run by East Ayrshire Car Club - they managed to get through 100 entries and two top-12 runoffs - a real achievement for the organisers. It made me really proud to be a member of such a well run club and I'm sure they'll get the big event again.
The usual Class A8 crowd were there - Alastair in his TVR, Graeme and Jennifer in the Exige and David Child making a return in the Mk3 MX5 but the class was won by Scott Cruikshanks in a stunning Lotus 211. It was a pleasure to watch - such a smooth drive - no drama at all and what looked like a touch of left foot braking into Norries. He came very close to beating Graeme Bremner's class record. I'm not sure the Lotus 211 is really in the spirit of a road going production car class (it's a pretty extreme machine) but it was a remarkable sight nonetheless.
Next outing for me is this weekend when I'm off to Three Sisters near Wigan for a round of the TJ Services Northern Speed Championship.
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